Despite now-former Calgary Flames bench boss Bill Peters “resigning” amidst a wave of controversy surrounding a racial slur-filled tirade he directed at Akim Aliu several years ago, none of this is close to being over.
Further stories of abuse at the hands of Peters, this time of the physical variety, spawned from Aliu’s allegations, as former Hurricanes defenceman Michal Jordan took to Twitter and claimed that he and one of his teammates were physically assaulted on the bench during a game by their former coach.
Jordan’s allegations were corroborated and confirmed — first by TSN’s Frank Seravalli and subsequently by multiple other reports along with now head coach Rod Brind’Amour, who was on the bench as an assistant coach when the incident apparently took place.
After it was established without a doubt that these in-game incidents happened, former Hurricanes owner Peter Karmanos — who was at the helm when the abuses allegedly took place — publicly scolded his ex-general manager, Ron Francis, for apparently not informing him of Peters’ misconducts after a group of players and coaches approached Francis about the alleged in-game assaults.
Well, one of these dudes is lying straight through their teeth, as Francis finally dropped a half-hearted press release on Saturday claiming he did inform Karmanos of the incidents:
Obviously, both of these things can’t be true. Francis admits to knowing about the incidents here, so that is an indisputable fact. Did he tell Karmanos, as he claims, or keep it to himself, like the former owner claims?
Even if Francis is somewhat telling the truth here, it raises even more questions, mainly: Why did someone in the position of Francis — with the power and authority to hire and fire as he sees fit — offer Peters a contract extension the summer after he admitted to knowing about all of this?
Jordan’s last season with the Canes was in 2015-16, so the absolute latest the on-bench assaults could’ve occurred would’ve been some time in the early spring of 2016. That same summer, Francis doled out a multi-year extension to Peters despite it being obvious that the majority of his roster had little-to-no respect left for their bench boss — oh and that he literally punched and kicked his own players, which seems like something that would be somewhat of concern when you’re talking about doling out millions of dollars in guaranteed money to a guy like Peters.
It doesn’t even matter which one (or if both) of these dudes is lying, they’re both at least partly to blame for this disaster right now. But this is looking especially bad on Francis at the moment, who is currently the general manager of the Seattle expansion team — for now, at least.
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